


The Morning After

by cdybedahl



Series: The Consequences of Inebriation [1]
Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/pseuds/cdybedahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beca learns the hard way not to try to out-drink Tasmanians with double her body mass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

Sunlight shone through the window of Beca and Kimmy Jin’s room, cruelly stabbing Beca in the face. With an anguished groan, she pulled the blanket over her head. For a few seconds, she tried to go back to sleep. But the pounding pain in her head put a stop to that, and the movement necessary to move the blanket was enough to tilt her digestive system over the edge. Desperately trying to delay the inevitable, she half-intentionally fell out of her bed and got her face over the wastebasket just a fraction of a second before her stomach forcefully ejected its contents. She stayed desperately clinging to it for what felt like an eternity as her entire inside cramped, trying to get whatever was poisoning her out. When the last drops of half-digested tequila had finally left her and the spasms receded, she sank shivering to the floor.  
Slowly and one by one thoughts entered her head, as if they were afraid of what they’d find. The first to appear was the firm decision to never again try to out-drink a Tasmanian. Or, really, anyone at all weighing twice as much as she did. It was a recipe for pain. As she was learning.  
The second thought was that she was still fully dressed, and that her jeans had stains on them that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what they were. Being dressed was good, though, since she couldn’t remember how or when she came home.  
The order of the thoughts got less clear after that. There had been a party. A Barden Bellas party. Beca remember singing, and dancing, and talking, and drinking. A whole lot of drinking. Way too much drinking.  
She was still trying to remember as much as possible from the night before, and particularly if she’d done something she ought to regret, when a chime came from up on her desk. The kind of chime her phone emitted when a text message arrived. She leveraged herself up on her elbow, stretched out her arm and fished blindly for the phone. Fresh pain exploded through her head and a wave of nausea nearly made her hurl again, but she managed to grab the phone. She sank back onto the floor while trying to decipher the arcane symbols on the phone’s screen.  
“Chloe Beale,” they said.  
That was the part that said who it was from. Just the thought of the beautiful redhead made her smile, in spite of her misery. And after the name came the message itself. She squinted and tried to read it.  
“I still can’t believe you said that to me,” the message read.  
What?  
Beca sat up abruptly, headache and nausea suddenly less important. She’d said something to Chloe? Something that made Chloe send a message like that? She had no memory whatsoever of having said anything out of the ordinary the night before. As far as she could remember, she’d kept her distance from Chloe. She usually did, when the Bellas were being social. Not because she disliked the co-captain, no, because of the exact opposite. She was painfully in love with her. Which she would, obviously, never admit to anyone ever. What if she’d said something really horrible and insulting, while trying not to say something obviously love-struck? She could easily see that happening.  
Beca put the phone back on the desk and buried her face in her hands. The headache returned with a vengeance, and the nausea with it. The vile smell from the wastebasket didn’t exactly help.  
“Oh God,” she groaned.  
“I hope you’re going to take that out really soon.”  
Beca looked up. Kimmy Jin was glaring at her. With, to be fair, more of a reason than usual.  
“Sorry,” Beca mumbled.  
With an heroic effort she got to her feet and started cleaning up after herself.

A handful of aspirin and a shower later Beca felt better. Nowhere near fine, but good enough to function. Physically, at least. Emotionally, she was worse. The clearer her thinking got, the more worried she got over that text from Chloe. Why hadn’t she called, to begin with? She usually had no compunctions about calling Beca at any hour of the day. Or night. If there was a third option, she’d call then too. So something had made her prefer the distance of a text message. Something made her not want to talk to Beca.  
When she walked into the nearby coffee shop in search of breakfast, worry had settled as a solid lump in her stomach. It was bad enough that she might have lost Chloe as a friend, but not even knowing why… She pulled her jacket closer around her and pretended to study the menu above the counter. She already knew exactly what she wanted, of course, but it was somewhere safe to aim her eyes.  
“Hey, Beca!”  
The sudden shout made her start. She turned toward the sound. At a corner table, Cynthia Rose and Stacie sat. Cynthia Rose was sipping coffee, and Stacie was waving enthusiastically at Beca. Beca gave her a half-hearted smile in return. Much as she didn’t feel like company, she didn’t want to rudely ignore her Bella sisters.  
Also, maybe they knew what had happened the night before.  
She made an effort to smile as she put her coffee and bagel on the table and pulled out a chair.  
“Hi,” she said.  
“Hello, girl,” Cynthia Rose said. “Damn, you look almost alive! You’re made of sterner stuff than I thought.”  
“Thanks,” Beca said. “Although, honestly, I don’t really feel all that good.”  
“I can imagine,” Stacie said. “How’s your hand?”  
Beca looked at her, confused.  
“My hand?” she said.  
“Yeah,” Stacie said. “I mean, it wasn’t bleeding a lot, but still.”  
“ _Bleeding_?!”  
Beca looked down at her hands. True enough, the left one had a couple of long scratches on its back. They were well scabbed over, which was probably why she hadn’t noticed before. But now that she saw them, she noticed the mild pain in the hand. Which didn’t just come from the scratches, now that she thought about it. The knuckles hurt too. As if she’d hit something. Or someone.  
The lump of worry in her stomach grew several sizes in an instant.  
“You don’t remember that?” Stacie said.  
Cynthia Rose laughed.  
“Wow, how drunk were you?” she said.  
Beca sighed.  
“Very,” she said. “Most of the night is a complete blank. I don’t even know how I got home.”  
“Nothing? Really?” Stacie said. “Not even the Chloe thing?”  
Beca froze.  
“What. Chloe. Thing?” she said, glaring at them.  
Cynthia Rose and Stacie turned and looked at each other. They both got expressions Beca couldn’t read, something between worry and disbelief. Cynthia Rose was the first to turn back to Beca.  
“Nothing?” she said. “Not a thing? Really?”  
“All I know is I got this strange text message from Chloe this morning,” Beca said.  
“Dude!” Stacie said. “Aubrey is going to _kill_ you!”  
Beca’s eyebrows rose.  
“Aubrey?” she said. “Why would she…?”  
Stacie turned to Cynthia Rose again.  
“Um,” she said. “Don’t we have… that thing?”  
“Right,” Cynthia Rose said. “That thing. Which we, um, have to go to. Now.”  
They both hastily got up from their seats and headed for the exit. At the last moment, Stacie stopped and turned back to Beca.  
“Er,” she said. “I think you should talk to Chloe. Like, _soon_.”  
Then she more or less ran out of the coffee shop. Beca sat staring after her retreating friends in shock.  
What had she _done_?

It took more than a dozen rings before Amy answered her phone.  
“This had better be really damn important,” was the first thing she said.  
“Er, hi?” Beca said. “It’s Beca.”  
“What do you want?” Amy said. “You lost last night, so I won’t snap your scrawny little neck for waking me, but this still better be important.”  
“Um,” Beca said. “Do you by any chance remember what I did to Chloe last night?”  
There was a long silence from the other end. It felt like years, at least, to Beca. She spent the time nervously gnawing on her own lower lip.  
“You don’t remember?” Amy finally said.  
“No,” Beca said, her voice small and scared.  
“Not anything?”  
“No.”  
A huge laugh exploded through the phone connection.  
“Oh, that’s fucking _priceless_!” Amy said when she managed to get her breath back.  
And then she hung up.

“Lily?” Beca said when the phone connected and she heard a soft whisper at the other end.  
She turned the volume up as far as it’d go.  
“I liked how you punched Bumper through his own beer glass,” she heard Lily say.  
Well, that explained her hand. Also, having punched Bumper was far, _far_ better than having punched Chloe, which she’d been afraid she’d done.  
“Thanks,” she said. “What else did I do last night?”  
There was a long pause.  
“Lye dissolves a body much faster than acid,” Lily finally said. “But you have to crush the remains of the bones afterwards.”

Beca clasped her phone between her hands and pulled her knees up under her chin. She was sitting on a bench out on the quad, in spite of the cold weather. Neither Jessica, Denise nor Ashley had had any more to say about the previous night. Which meant that Beca’s choices for asking any further were down to non-Bella aca-people, Aubrey or Chloe herself. None of which was particularly appealing. If she’d punched Bumper, then at least a couple of Treblemakers had been there, which meant Jesse almost certainly knew what she’d done.  
She _so_ didn’t want to ask him about it. Which meant that she really only had one option. Throwing herself on Aubrey’s mercy. The thought did not appeal. But, unfortunately, the thought of not being able to fix whatever it was she’d done to Chloe appealed even less. If she’d actually hurt Chloe, she’d _help_ Aubrey kill her. And maybe pass on the tip about the lye. If she lost Chloe, she’d want to die.  
She sighed and closed her eyes.  
Not that she _had_ Chloe, more than as a friend and a Bellas sister. She hadn’t dared to as much as hint to the older woman that she loved her, for fear of how she’d react. She’d had enough bad experiences coming out to women she’d been interested in. Not that she could even imagine Chloe do or say some of the nastier things she’d had as responses. Drinks thrown in her face. Laughter. Screams calling her an abomination before the Lord, and to stay the hell away. One even sent her brothers to beat Beca up.  
Chloe wouldn’t do any of that. She was just too nice, too friendly and pleasant to deliberately do anything nasty. She’d, most likely, be sad that she couldn’t return Beca’s feelings. Be really understanding and supportive. And, well, straight.  
In a way, getting slapped and called a filthy dyke would be better. At least it’d be _over_.  
She opened her eyes again. Over. It was time to get this current thing like that. She flipped through her phone’s contact list and hit Aubrey’s number. A few rings went through before the call was picked up.  
“Posen”, Aubrey’s voice said. “How can I help you?”  
“Er, hi,” Beca said. “It’s Beca.”  
There was a disturbingly long silence.  
“Beca?” Aubrey finally said. “Why are you calling _me_?”  
“Um,” Beca said. “Because Stacie thought you might want to kill me.”  
“Do I have a reason to?” Aubrey said.  
“I don’t know,” Beca said.  
She could hear herself how small she sounded.  
“ _Well_ ,” Aubrey said. “I guess someone drank a bit much, huh?”  
“Way too much,” Beca said. “Way, way too much.”  
“You don’t know what you did,” Aubrey said.  
It was not a question.  
“No,” Beca whimpered.  
“You know that Chloe is my best friend, right?”  
“Yes.”  
“And that if someone were to hurt her a lot, I would take that very personally?”  
“Yes.”  
“And that my father was in the Kuwait war, and when he was talking to his old Ranger buddies and didn’t know I was listening, I learned a whole lot of interesting things? One of which would be something called a ‘fire ant enema’. One. Of. Which.”  
Beca swallowed.  
“I could kill myself?” she said. “Save you the bother?”  
“Or you could make it right,” Aubrey said. “Are you on campus now?”  
“Yeah.”  
“I’ll let Chloe know you’ll be there in ten minutes.”  
“Ok.”  
“And Beca?” Aubrey said. “If you mess this up, just remember ‘fire ants’.”

Ten minutes later Beca was standing outside Chloe’s door, trying to gather the courage to knock. She had no idea what she’d find inside. What mood Chloe would be in. She might be angry. Might yell at Beca. Slam the door in her face. Tell her that she never wanted to see her again. Or she might be hurt and sad. Might be crying. Tears dragging mascara down her cheeks, all because of something Beca had said and couldn’t remember. All because Beca loved her but was too much of a coward to tell her.  
Quickly, before her mind could get in the way, she moved her hand and knocked on the door. _Morituri te salutant_ , she thought.  
“Coming!” she heard Chloe’s shout from inside.  
She didn’t sound angry or upset. She sounded quite normal.  
“Is that good or bad?” had time to pass through Beca’s mind before the door opened.  
Chloe was right there. In front of her. Dressed in gym shorts and a large old sweater that left one of her shoulders bare, hair unkempt and without any makeup. To Beca, she looked the very image of loveliness.  
“Um, hi?” Beca said.  
“Hi there,” Chloe said.  
Her voice had gone all husky. Before Beca had time to think, Chloe’s arms were around her and she was being pushed across the hallway until she was squashed between Chloe and the wall. Soft, insistent lips met hers, and a hand was gripping the hair at the back of her head. Beca’s arms wrapped around Chloe and her mouth responded to the kiss of their own volition, long before her mind had caught up to what was happening.  
Chloe kept holding her after they broke the kiss, too tightly for Beca to be able to see her face.  
“You’re not angry?” she said.  
“No,” Chloe said. “Why would I be? I got a bit worried when you didn’t respond to my text, though.”  
She pulled back a bit, so she could look down at Beca.  
“My little knight in shining armor,” she said.  
Beca blinked.  
“Excuse me?” she said.  
“How’s your hand?” Chloe said. “It was bleeding last night. You said it was OK, but you were pretty drunk.”  
Beca looked away.  
“Yeah, about that,” she said.  
Chloe let go of her and stepped back.  
“Please don’t tell me you didn’t really mean it,” she said. “That is was just something you said because of the booze.”  
Her voice suddenly sounded cold. Beca looked back at her, swallowing nervously. Chloe wasn’t smiling any more.  
“My hand’s ok,” Beca said.  
“That’s not what I meant,” Chloe said. “You know that.”  
Beca’s head was spinning. Far from being as angry or upset as she’d feared, Chloe had _kissed_ her. For real. All her guesses about what horrible thing she’d said while drunk vanished, and were replaced by a huge nothing. She had absolutely no idea at all what she could’ve said that would make Chloe react like that while making the other Bellas react like _they_ had.  
“I have no idea what I said last night,” she said. “I don’t remember _anything_ from last night.”  
“I was really, really drunk,” she added.  
“Oh,” Chloe said.  
Beca didn’t know what to do with her hands. For lack of a better idea, she stuck them in her pockets.  
“Although,” she said, “if what I said is what made you kiss me like that, I’m really happy I said it.”  
Chloe looked at her in silence. Beca looked back in fear, trying to read her reaction.  
“I think you’d better come inside,” Chloe said.  
She held open the door to the small one-person room. Beca walked past her into it. She’d been there before a few times, but it wasn’t really familiar territory to her. It held an unmade bed, a chair with lots of clothes on it, a desk full of books and papers and a wardrobe. Chloe closed the door and leaned against it.  
“Bumper was being an ass to me,” she said. “You stepped up to defend me. When he didn’t stop, you threw a punch at him. I don’t know if you meant to, but you hit the beer glass he was holding and smashed it to bits against his chest. I heard he had to have two stitches. And that he refused to tell anyone what had happened. Apparently it wouldn’t be good for his reputation if it came out that he got beaten up by a tiny freshman girl.”  
“Oh,” Beca said.  
“Jesse and Donald helped him to the ER,” Chloe said, “and apart from the Bellas I think they’re the only ones who know what happened. But they don’t know the next part.”  
Chloe’s hand dug into the pocket of her gym shorts, and came out holding something. Chloe raised her hand, holding a small object between thumb and forefinger. It was a ring, Beca saw. A plain one, made from grey metal. In fact, it looked very much like her own thumb ring.  
Beca’s gaze snapped down to her own right hand. To the empty spot on her thumb where the ring should have been.  
“Is that…?” she said.  
Chloe nodded.  
“You told me that you’re gay, that you love me, and you asked me to marry you.”  
“ _That’s_ what your text was about?” Beca said. “The thing you couldn’t believe I said?”  
Chloe nodded.  
“The straight girl I’ve been falling in love with all year suddenly came out, confessed her love and proposed marriage,” she said. “In a single breath.”  
Her expression turned harsh.  
“It had better not be a joke, Beca Mitchell,” she said. “Because I don’t think I could forgive that.”  
Beca shook her head and made denying gestures with her hands.  
“Oh, it’s _so_ not a joke!” she said. “It’s just…”  
Chloe looked quizzically at her, face still hard.  
“It’s just what?”  
Beca hesitated. Things were moving too fast. In a good direction, a fantastic direction, yes, but still too fast. She felt like she was several steps behind. Her mind latched on to the first objection that occurred to her.  
“I can’t afford to pay for a wedding,” she said.  
Chloe’s expression softened into a wide, glorious smile. She moved away from the door and came as close to Beca as possible while still letting her look her in the face. She placed a kiss on Beca’a forehead.  
“I think the wedding thing is a bit premature anyway,” she said. “Although I’m totally keeping the ring.”  
Beca watched with rapt attention as Chloe put the ring on the ring finger of her left hand.  
“It’s a bit big,” Chloe said. “I think I’ll have to have it taken in a little.”  
Beca stared at it. Her ring, her subtle yes-I’m-gay thumb ring, was on Chloe’s hand in the position of an engagement ring. Emotions swelled in her, too many and too varied for her to handle. There was elation and love and disbelief and even a fair bit of fear. Her vision suddenly got all blurry.  
“Hey, don’t cry,” Chloe said. “Everything’s all right.”  
Her warm, soft hand wiped the tears off Beca’s cheek.  
“I can’t believe that,” Beca whispered.  
“Well, I’ll just have to show you, then, won’t I?” Chloe said. “Here.”  
She started wriggling her own thumb ring off its accustomed finger. The ring Beca had been looking at all year, wondering if it meant the same thing her own did, and eventually decided that it didn’t. She’d seen Chloe with guys too often, starting with Shower Guy and moving on.  
“I thought you were straight,” Beca said. “I only saw you with boys.”  
Chloe took her hand and put the ring on Beca’s ring finger.  
“I’m bi,” she said. “There are a lot more available guys than girls. And the girls tend not to want to be very open about it.”  
She poked Beca in the ribs.  
“Case in point,” she said.  
Beca couldn’t help laughing a little.  
“It’s too big,” she said, waving her hand with the new ring on it.  
“Well, they’re both supposed to be thumb rings,” Chloe said.  
She grinned.  
“We can go have them taken in together,” she said.  
Beca made a sound not even she herself could tell if it was a laugh or a sob.  
“Oh my God,” she said.  
Chloe moved forward, arms stretching out to engulf her in a hug, when it suddenly got too much for her. Without warning, panic rose inside Beca. The walls closed in, crushing her. She couldn’t breathe. Unheard noise screamed into her ears, drowning out all real sound. She gasped and stepped back, as fast as she could, until her back hit the desk. She froze there, eyes closed hard and arms clutching herself desperately. She tried to force herself through the panic, tried to _breathe_.  
“Beca?” she heard in the distance. “What’s wrong?”  
She managed to exhale. She knew how to do this, she told herself. She’d done it before enough times. Using all the willpower she had, she managed to hold her breath for a second or two, and then inhale slowly. There. One whole breath. She exhaled again, and the panic began to recede. Hold. Breathe in.  
“ _Beca!_ ” she heard Chloe say. “What’s happening?”  
So much fear in her voice.  
Two breaths. Three. Four. Every one easier than the last. By the sixth, she didn’t need to pause between exhale and inhale.  
“Sorry,” she managed to say. “Panic.”  
“Oh,” Chloe said. “Was it something I did? Can I help?”  
Beca shook her head, eyes still closed.  
“Just…” she gasped. “A moment…”  
“Oh, for sure,” Chloe said. “Take all the time you need.”  
Beca kept breathing. Slow, controlled breaths. Air was life. Air was the base from which everything else followed. She could almost hear her old therapist’s voice as she ran through the familiar mantra. Breathe out. Hold. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.  
Bit by bit, she regained control of herself. After a couple of minutes she felt collected enough to open her eyes. Which was very quick, really. It used to be that she’d be useless for the rest of the day after an attack.  
“Beca?” Chloe said.  
She still sounded scared.  
“Sorry about that,” Beca said. “I haven’t had one of those in some time.”  
“Was it something I did?” Chloe said.  
She’d backed up too, Beca noticed, and had her back to the door again.  
“It’s not your fault,” Beca said. “I’m just a mess.”  
“Oh,” Chloe said. “Would it help or hurt if I hugged you?”  
Beca couldn’t help smiling.  
“A hug would be nice,” she said.  
Chloe approached slowly, like one might a skittish cat, and embraced Beca as if she was made from the thinnest eggshell porcelain. Beca put her own arms around the taller girl and rested her head on her shoulder. The soft, warm presence of Chloe worked like a balm for her frayed nerves.  
“It’s just been a long day,” she said. “Most of which I spent scared out of my mind because I thought I’d hurt you and driven you away forever. Then you say you’re in love with me, and the _rings_ , like, we’re _engaged_ , and…”  
Beca licked her lips.  
“The mood swing just got too much,” she said.  
Chloe stroked her hair.  
“We can write the whole marriage proposal thing off as something really cute you did while drunk and desperate,” she said. “But I do love you. There’s no changing that.”  
Beca hugged her harder.  
“I like wearing your ring,” she said.  
Chloe kissed the top of her head.  
“Good,” Chloe said. “I like wearing yours.”  
“But, um,” Beca said. “Maybe we can admit it wasn’t exactly a well thought-through thing, and we’ll talk about it for serious if we’re still together when I graduate?”  
Hearing her own words, doubt struck. Without letting go, she pulled back far enough that she could look Chloe in the eyes.  
“We are together now, right?” she said.  
Chloe gave her a brilliant smile.  
“We totally are,” she said. “And yes, we can totally do that, my girlfriend.”  
The last two words sent a wave of pleasure down Beca’s skin.  
“Oh wow,” she said. “The prettiest, most popular girl on campus is my girlfriend.”  
“What’s this about you graduating, though?” Chloe said. “I thought you were going to LA as soon as this year is over?”  
“That was the plan,” Beca said. “But then this crazy girl walked into my shower and dragged me into this a capella group, where I got a bunch of real friends for the first time in my life, and now I have a girlfriend here, and…”  
She looked at Chloe in silence for a moment.  
“I’m probably totally jinxing it by saying this,” she said. “But for pretty much the first time in my life, I’m _happy_. And I have you to thank for it.”  
Chloe’s smile grew even happier, something Beca would’ve sworn was impossible. She reached up and stroked Chloe’s cheek.  
“Even if you were to leave me forever right now,” she said. “You’d still be the best thing that ever happened to me.”  
“Oh my God,” Chloe said, blinking away tears. “Please shut up before I start crying for real.”  
Having started pouring her heart out, there was more Beca wanted to say. That she loved her. That she didn’t want to be in LA or anywhere else where Chloe wasn’t. That she dreaded graduation day, since that might be the last time she saw Chloe. Instead of talking, she caught Chloe’s lips with her own, trying to put all those feelings into a single kiss. She hoped intensely that it’d be good enough to convey something of what she felt. She knew she was far less experienced at all aspects of love, physical in particular, than Chloe, but intense desire and longing had to count for something. Which it apparently did, judging from Chloe’s slightly stunned look when they finally broke apart.  
“I love you,” Beca said.  
She made an awkward shrugging motion. It wasn’t helped by the way she and Chloe had their arms around each other.  
“That’s pretty much it,” she said.  
Holding Chloe, feeling her warmth and sheer presence, felt so good to Beca. Sure, Chloe had kept touching her from the very first, but it had always been fairly brief and never very intense. It still had been pleasant enough that she’d wanted–no, _needed_ –more of it.  
“You’re totally adorable,” Chloe said.  
She stroked Beca’s hair.  
“What do you want to do now?” she asked, voice soft.  
“Can I just stay right here like this?” Beca said.  
“For a while,” Chloe said. “But my legs will tire. Also, we have practice in ten minutes.”  
Beca sighed. She let her hands sink down to Chloe’s hips.  
“I guess we’d better get over there,” she said.  
She looked up at Chloe. Who was grinning down at her.  
“Or,” Chloe said. “We could stay here.”  
“Skip practice?” Beca said. “Why, miss Beale, I don’t know what to say!”  
Chloe moved. All of a sudden, her breasts were pushing very noticeably against Beca, and her hands were firmly on Beca’s ass. Her hips moved ever so slightly, grinding a fraction of an inch against Beca’s.  
Several months’ worth of pent-up desire exploded through Beca’s body. So many nights, one hand between her legs and one over her mouth to keep from waking Kimmy Jin, fantasizing about Chloe. Who was now _right there_. A gasp escaped her.  
Chloe’s lips almost touched Beca’s ear when she spoke.  
“I could call Aubrey and explain,” she whispered.  
One of her hands moved up a little. A finger ran along the tiny strip of bare skin between Beca’s jeans and top.  
“If you want,” she whispered.  
Beca swallowed. She wanted, all right.  
“Er, sure,” she managed to say. “That sounds nice.”  
Without letting go of Beca, Chloe stretched out and managed to reach the phone lying on a nearby chair. She made a call almost without looking at it and then wedged it between her ear and shoulder. The hand she’d used returned to Beca’s rear.  
“Hi, it’s me,” Chloe said.  
Beca could just hear that Aubrey said something at the other end, but not what.  
“I’m fine,” Chloe said. “Better than fine. I’m aca-awesome.”  
“You sure are,” Beca mumbled.  
She moved the hand that was stroking Chloe’s skin higher, in under her sweater. Chloe smiled at her.  
“She’s here with me,” Chloe said. “And, um, we won’t be making it to practice today.”  
More sounds of Aubrey talking.  
“No, we’re not arguing,” Chloe said. “Didn’t I just tell you things are awesome?”  
Chloe ran a finger along Beca’s lower lip.  
“What we’re doing?” she said to the phone.  
Another wide grin graced her face.  
“Nothing much right now,” she said. “But I think in a little while we’ll be doing…”  
Her smile turned lewd.  
“Let’s call it very personal cardio,” she said.  
She tossed the phone aside and turned her full attention to Beca.

  



End file.
